Review: Get Smart

Sixties TV spy spoof “Get Smart” inspires this “action comedy” that climaxes with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in a Frank Gehry concert hall. Will agents from KAOS blow up the L.A. building, plus the president, or will agents from CONTROL restore faith and funding for their secret agency? This relic from the Cold War was overlooked in the Global War on Terror, to use Rumsfeld’s tag in his infamous October 16, 2003 memo. The late Don Adams played Maxwell Smart (aka Agent 86) in 138 episodes of the show’s original five-year run. Steve Carell selectively channels Smart’s persona for a partial impersonation. The bankable star—who logged 350 episodes on “The Daily Show” and sixty-six to date on “The Office”—is a fastidious analyst with a fantasy of serving as an agent. After KAOS decimates CONTROL’s roster and outs the surviving spooks, 86 gets his chance. He tracks yellow cake uranium that will fuel a $200 billion ransom demand. Peter Segal (“Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” and “Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult”) directs this “smart” summer fun. For a bit of “policy placement” writers Tom J. Astle (Northwestern ’82) & Matt Ember import a talking point from the post-9/11 Pentagon on gathering intelligence using humans (HUMINT) instead of satellites and intercepts, as in SIGINT, COMINT, ELINT, IMINT and MASINT. (Don’t blink and miss the $18 million animatronic fly that’s wired to spy.) Smart wins by deploying tactical empathy: “Yes they are the bad guys. That’s what they do, not who they are.” With Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Kenneth Davitian and James Caan. 111m. (Bill Stamets)